The word “bellicose” is defined by Merriam Websters as “favoring or inclined to start quarrels or wars”.

Here’s the opening paragraph of a Guardianarticle by Peter Beaumont (Netanyahu accuses Iran of building missile production sites in Syria, Aug. 28):

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has accused Iran of building sites to produce missiles in Syria and Lebanon during a meeting with the UN secretary-general, António Guterres – part of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from Israel and the US against Tehran.

So, what “bellicose rhetoric” by Israel is Beaumont referring to?

Here are the relevant paragraphs:

The remarks, made by Netanyahu at the beginning of a meeting with Guterres on Monday, come against a background of growing Israeli anxiety over the expanding Iranian influence on its northern border.

Netanyahu accused Iran of turning Syria into a “base of military entrenchment as part of its declared goal to eradicate Israel”.

He added: “It is also building sites to produce precision-guided missiles towards that end, in both Syria and in Lebanon. This is something Israel cannot accept. This is something the UN should not accept.”

Israel has pointed to Tehran’s steadily increasing influence in the region during the six-year-old Syrian conflict, whether via its own Revolutionary Guard forces or Shia Muslim proxies, especially Hezbollah.

Were you able to spot the “bellicose” Israeli rhetoric? We certainty weren’t. Is Beaumont suggesting that Israeli warnings concerning ongoing Iranian threats to annihilate Israel represent “bellicose” rhetoric? Of course, such bellicosethreats by Iranian leaders are ubiquitous, and impossible to deny. As recently as this past February, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei characterised Israel as a “cancerous tumor” and called for a “holy intifada” to destroy the country.

It really takes a lot of ideological conditioning to cover tensions between Israel and Iran, and not only ignore or obfuscate Iran’s genocidal threats, but to frame Israel as the belligerent party in the dispute.

How dare Jews point out whenever somebody that has declared their intent to commit genocide against them is actually doing that! This is ‘bellicose rhetoric’, then everything that the Guardian posts against Israel is bellicose rhetoric.